


green

by ironicpotential



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Character Study, Introspection, Plants, mentions of Miles O'Brien - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:41:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27620825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ironicpotential/pseuds/ironicpotential
Summary: A small introspective drabble about Kira Nerys, Bajor, and plants.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17





	green

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ChancellorGriffin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChancellorGriffin/gifts).



> I ran a trivia game for my friend group and offered up the prize of a Fic of Questionable Quality to the winner. I was given the challenge of Kira and the O'Briens and babies, but somehow ended up with this. So uhhh... if you're reading this, no you aren't?

**I.**

Bajor was free.

In all of her years in the resistance, Nerys never dared to imagine what her life would be like afterwards. She could never think that far in the future. There was only ever the thought of survival in her mind. Only ever a plan for the next mission. The next sabotage. The next dead Cardassian. 

Now Bajor was free and so was she. 

Almost.

It had been an easy decision to join the Bajoran Militia after the Cardassians withdrew. She wasn’t a farmer like her father, never learned to till and plant and sow. She wasn’t an artist like her mother. Her callused hands were more suited to a phaser than a sculpting tool. 

She was a soldier and she wore her rank of Major with pride. 

But no sooner had the Cardassians left, the United Federation of Planets swooped in and she was sent away from Bajor to serve as a liaison officer on an abandoned Cardassian space station.

Starfleet called it Deep Space Nine, but Nerys wasn’t sure she could ever think of it as anything other than Terek Nor. 

The place was stifling. Cold and lifeless, even as it bustled with Starfleet officers with their too-clean jumpsuits and their heads up their asses. They smiled as they marched down the promenade, already comfortable with their new assignment. Meanwhile, Nerys’s heart ached each time she heard her boots echoing across the steel floor. Each footfall was a reminder of the way her heels once sank into the soft dirt of the Dahkur province. When she stared out the station windows at the vast expanse of space, she didn’t see adventure. There was no new frontier. There was only Bajor, slowly spinning below. 

Her real home.

One week after her arrival on the station, she went to that insufferable Ferengi bartender to ask for a holosuite program. 

Dahkur looked just the way she remembered. Smelled just the way she remembered. But it was wrong. It was all wrong. 

A holoprogram could copy the hills stretching across the horizon of the province, but it could never duplicate the rich and painful history that had shaped its people. Its digital soil was untainted, blood had never been spilled in its valleys. 

None of it was real. 

And Deep Space Nine would never be her home.

**II.**

War was never waged solely against a people. 

It was all-encompassing. Devastating. Its effects meant to be felt long after the last weapon was laid down. 

The Cardassians made sure that if they were ever forced to withdraw, Bajor would never forget their scaly grip. They poisoned the land, rendering its soil barren, taking away yet another piece of autonomy from its people.

As much as it pained Nerys to admit it, Winn Adami was right. For post-war Bajor, salam grass was worth its weight in latinum. Moving the soil reclaimators to Rakantha province would be a sound strategy to increase Bajor’s export power. The return of agriculture would be seen as a new beginning, the herald of a new Bajoran age. 

Agriculture meant prosperity. Prosperity meant growth. 

She would make no promises, she thought, as she prepared to transport down to the surface of the planet, but she would speak with the farmers of Dahkur. 

Not for Winn. 

But for the good of Bajor.

**III.**

Even after years living on Deep Space Nine, Nerys’s quarters remained sparse. She had a personal shrine set up, but no decoration. No trinkets. She had never gotten in the habit of collecting— not like Dax whose shelves were lined with eight lifetime's worth of clutter. 

It was different in the O’Brien quarters. Even though the family had the same grey walls and metal floors as every other quarters on the station, their space teemed with life— with the warmth that they shared with each other. 

It was reflected in Molly’s pictures that had been hung proudly on every wall. In the holos that were displayed on shelves and on side tables. In the smiles that came easier once pneumatic doors whooshed closed. 

Both Miles and Keiko were kind to her, though she could do without Miles’s nagging. But the thing that drew her eye most was how green it was. There were plants on every surface, even in her small guest quarters. 

A tiny pocket of green, here on this cold, metallic station. 

That warmed Nerys’s heart nearly as much as the cup of Quarktajino that Keiko brought her. 

They sat for a moment in companionable silence, after the jokes about the taste of Quark’s concoction died down, and Kira eyed the katterpod seedlings on the table thoughtfully. 

She had seen the way Keiko tended to them, tenderly almost, as if they were as dear to her as her daughter was. It reminded Nerys of her own father and the way he would wax poetic about the garden he cultivated so proudly. 

Keiko caught her gaze and softened. 

“I brought them back from Bajor,” she said, growing wistful. 

Nerys recognized the look. 

She and Keiko O’Brien shared more than the child that was now growing inside of her. Keiko was a kindred spirit. She understood the beauty of Bajor— knew the smell of the spring air and the feeling of its soil under her fingernails. 

She too, longed for someplace green, so much so that she had created this tiny eden— with help from Miles and Molly— right here on Deep Space Nine. One plant at a time, this family was bringing the station to life, making it a home, just like the healing planet below. 

And maybe, Nerys thought, maybe that could be enough.

Maybe this could be home for her, too. 


End file.
